Expert reviews and ratings

If there's one word that could easily describe Jurassic World Evolution, it's "faithful." Taking control of a ranger behind the wheel of a Jeep in the rain and sidling up to a pack of socializing Stegosaurus is as epic as it sounds and is a definite highlight, as is releasing a newly recovered species into your park. Despite the campaign stumbling over itself and losing focus towards the end, Evolution captures the essence of Jurassic Park while being a good park management sim in its own right.

Jurassic World Evolution is a mixed experience, at times reveling in its fantasy and becoming bogged down in its own systems in others. If you’re a fan of the franchise it’s a fun dip into the prehistoric pool, but the water isn’t deep enough to satisfy a voracious carnivore.

Don't get me wrong; I loved my time in Las Cinco Muertes, and there's immense satisfaction to be found in just sitting back and watching your creations roam. But with a brutal learning curve, weak tutorials, and a lack of meaningful gameplay once your parks are mature, even the most ardent paleontologist may struggle to keep coming back for more.

Besides the fact that there’s absolutely no evolution involved in it, Jurassic World: Evolution is a bad game because it’s just a bore of a park sim. Sure, the dinosaurs look nice enough, but the process of unlocking new species is beyond tedious and actually running the business is shallow and quickly gets stale. It beats getting mauled by raptors, but after careful consideration, I’ve decided not to endorse this park.

In its current form there's certainly enough for you to lose entire evenings to, and the dinosaurs themselves are absolutely beautiful. I actively want to look after them. But I'm just not finding the layer which keeps you coming back after that primary experience loses its sheen.

I was hugely disappointed that Jurassic World's SeaWorld-esque attraction wasn't available to create — though there's more than enough here to please those who want to build their own dinosaur theme park and let a Velociraptor loose every now and again. Arguably the best Jurassic Park-themed game to date, and a must-buy for fans of the films.

Jurassic World Evolution asks you to fail as a dinosaur keeper, but it lets you return to the task without consequence. You’ll be John Hammond the first few times through, watching control slip through your fingers as “life finds a way” to reclaim all you’ve worked so hard to build. But with practice and patience, you can build and maintain the park that the movies show in the first hour. In Jurassic World Evolution, you can finally create a Jurassic Park to be proud of.

It’s a greater disappointment because it falls so short of Planet Coaster. Frontier has already made the game that shows Evolution where it went wrong. It’s not that Evolution couldn’t have forged its own path, but it throws away lots of proven systems, often without substituting them for anything else. I don’t want to bad-mouth cool dinosaurs, but cool dinosaurs can only carry a game so far.

Afterwards the sandbox mode is open which incidentally takes place on the original Jurassic Park island. It is a bit disappointing that there's only one map for the sandbox but it the game's biggest map and there's added fan service in being the island that started the franchise. On the sandbox island players are free to do whatever, building their dream dinosaur theme park or the one from every visitor's nightmares.

Hands On: I'll definitely be covering more of the business management and sim aspects of Evolution in the full review, along with my thoughts on Site B. Until then, I have over 40 different dinosaur species to hatch, many of which have much larger teeth and greater possibilities for things to go horribly wrong.